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Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme, who was in the car on Saturday with Prime Minister Jean Castex, tested positive for Covid-19. The riders in the peloton are all negative for the coronavirus. Present on the Tour on Saturday, Prime Minister Jean Castex will undergo a screening test.
The coronavirus ended up inviting itself in the Tour de France. Tour director Christian Prudhomme has just tested positive for Covid-19 and must deviate from the event for a week, the organization of the race announced Tuesday, September 8.
On the other hand, all the runners are negative and can continue the race, the 10th stage of which starts at the beginning of the afternoon from the island of Oléron, in Charente-Maritime.
The director of the Tour, asymptomatic, will be replaced on the event by François Lemarchand. He will resume his place after the second day of rest, next Monday, in Isère.
Jean Castex in close contact with Christian Prudhomme
French Prime Minister Jean Castex took his place on Saturday in the Tour management car, alongside Christian Prudhomme, to follow the 8th stage. The head of government has indicated that he will be tested for Covid-19, Matignon announced on Tuesday.
Several members of the team management have also tested positive during the examinations carried out on the occasion of the first day of rest in Charente-Maritime. But no training has presented more than one positive case, which does not lead to any collective exclusion.
According to the health protocol decided by the authorities before the start of the Tour, on August 29 in Nice, positive people must leave the event. A team is excluded if it presents two cases in its workforce of about thirty people.
“I’m going to watch the Tour on TV”
“The riders live like monk-soldiers, which is not my case,” said the director of the Tour, who obviously did not come to the starting village of the Tour on the island of Oléron.
By virtue of his functions, Christian Prudhomme multiplies the meetings with the guests or the elected officials, as well as the protocol obligations. “It is for this reason that I do not belong to the ‘racing bubble’ and do not have contact with the runners,” he explained.
The Tour director said he had been tested three times before the start, “on August 6, 20 and 27”, each time with a negative result. “From the information given to me, it just happened,” he added.
“I am going to watch the Tour on television, which has not happened to me for fifteen years,” commented Christian Prudhomme, alone at the helm of the biggest race in the world since 2007.
With AFP
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